05.10.10

“[Intellectual monopolies are] a neo-colonialist plot to ensure the continuing dominance of Western nations.”

–Glyn Moody, author of Rebel Code

Summary: How India is getting further repressed by intellectual monopolies

INDIA is one of the West’s biggest victims and in order to ensure it stays behind, the West has devised measures which are called “IP” and include software patents or deprivation of vital drugs. Here at Techrights we are mostly focused on software patents in India because we see multinationals (not just Microsoft) imposing them upon the Indian population to restrict software development in India (unless it’s carried out by the multinationals or de facto subsidiaries like Infosys [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]). The assumption here is that Indian people are less worthy of equality and access to knowledge (which can be infinitely distributed anyway).

“It is also worth exposing corporate and/or political entities who are involved in these secret negotiations.”Floating around the Web at the moment are two leaked documents called “IPR India-EU trade agreement”[PDF] and “IPR India-Japan economic agreement”[PDF]. In the latter document (to give just one example), read page 2 about “harmonisation”. We wrote about this euphemism in relation to Europe and here we are seeing it in relation to Japan and India. Is Japan trying to export software patent laws (see page 3 about patents and TRIPS [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]) into India in the same way that the US (ruled mostly by corporate power) tried to export these to Europe? Either way, it seems like Indian free software supporters should rise to the challenge and derail these so-called ‘economic agreements’, which are of no economic value to India. It is also worth exposing corporate and/or political entities who are involved in these secret negotiations. It’s very similar to the umbrella called “ACTA” [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14], based on a cursory look at the texts. █

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